Program Committee

Board of Directors

Roy Close (Board Chair)
Roy M. Close is a Minneapolis native and graduate (English lit., 1965) of the University of Minnesota. He spent two decades writing about classical music, dance, theater, and other art forms as a critic and editor for The Minneapolis Star and Saint Paul Pioneer Press. Since leaving the newspaper biz he has worked mainly for nonprofit organizations, including (for a short time) the Ordway Music Theatre in St. Paul and (for a long time) Artspace in Minneapolis. He has written more than a dozen plays, many poems (chiefly sonnets and limericks), and the odd letter to the editor. Before joining the Board of Directors of The Soap Factory in 2017, he served on the Boards of the Center for Arts Criticism, James Sewell Ballet, the Playwrights’ Center, the Minnesota Fringe Festival, and Frank Theater. He and his wife Linda live near Cedar Lake in Minneapolis.

Alexa HorochowskiAlexa Horochowski is a sculptor with a long history of exhibitions in the Twin Cities, nationally and internationally including, Braga Menendez Gallery, Buenos Aires; The Drawing Center, NYC; Praxis International Art, NYC/Miami; Franconia Sculpture Park, Minneapolis; Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis; and MAEP Galleries at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Her multimedia, solo exhibition responding to an artist residency in Southern Chile, “Club Disminución”, was exhibited at The Soap Factory, 2014.Horochowski is Full Professor of Sculpture at St. Cloud State University, and a 2014 McKnight Fellow. Horochowski’s work is in collections at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center.

Colin Rusch
Colin Rusch is a Managing Director with Oppenheimer Cos. in New York City. As such he manages research of over 40 new energy sector companies and is intimately familiar with structured finance, and capital markets. A Twin Cities native, Colin is a trained dancer and has a long history of arts administration, advocacy and networking in the region and nationally.

Joseph Butler
Joe Butler has a 30-year background in national and international community organizing, community and economic development and design/project management. A New Orleans native, Joe is a Project Manager with Artspace Project, Inc., leading the $30 million Treme’ Bell School Artspace Project in New Orleans, as well as work in Memphis, El Paso, Washington DC and Mt. Rainier, MD. He brings a significant network of national funders and experts, as well as extensive experience in project management and community engagement. His international experience includes design and project work in Durban, SA.

Rosemary Williams
Rosemary Williams is an artist and filmmaker based in the Twin Cities. She had a solo exhibition at the Soap Factory in 2010-11, an 11-channel silent video work, Belongings. Rosemary has exhibited her work locally, nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the Drawing Center in New York, the Aldrich Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, as well as other shows in New York, London, Berlin, and beyond. Her work has been profiled in the New York Times Magazine, the Times of London, and National Public Radio. She was a Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Fellow in Visual Arts for 2007-8, and in 2016 became a Sundance Institute Fellow for her episodic film project in development, MXC: The Invention of Tomorrow. Rosemary received her MFA in Combined Media from Hunter College, City University of New York, and is Professor of Integrated Media at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, MN.

Liz Summers
Liz Summers is a trusts and estates and tax attorney with a passion for contemporary art and a background in the nonprofit space. Liz received her J.D. from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, and her B.A. in English from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and dog.

Bill Mague (ED)
Bill Mague has over 25 years of experience in public and non-profit real estate finance, development and strategic management. Bill spent the past 11 years as Vice President of Asset Management for Artspace Projects, Inc., the nation’s leading non-profit developer for the arts. Under his management the portfolio of long-term, permanently affordable housing and space for artists more than doubled, growing from 17 projects in 9 states to 42 projects in 16 states. Prior to Artspace, Bill spent 13 years at Royal Bank of Canada, as Vice President of Fixed Income Banking. In that capacity he participated in over $1 billion in tax-exempt bond financing for affordable multifamily housing, senior assisted living facilities, higher education and private K-12 education capital projects, transportation and utility projects. Bill also served on the Metropolitan Council’s Housing and Land Use Advisory Committee between 2000 and 2003.
A native of New Orleans, Mr. Mague graduated from Carleton College, Northfield, MN with a B.A. in Economics.

Steve Ozone

Born in Rochester, New York, Steve Ozone lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He graduated from Ball State University in Indiana (David Letterman’s alma mater) with a B.A. in Photojournalism. His work has been shown nationally and is in private collections. In 2008 he worked with the St. Bernard Project in Louisiana to photograph families displaced by Hurricane Katrina. In 2009, he received a Minnesota State Arts Board Cultural Community Partnership grant to work with at-risk teens. Currently, he is at work on a documentary film titled The Registry. Funded by a National Park Service Confinement Site grant, The Registry tells the story of the over 6,000 second-generation Japanese Americans trained to become Japanese linguists during WWII at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Through translation of documents, military transmissions and interrogation these experts are credited by U.S. military personnel with shortening the war against Japan by two years.